


Village Idiot

by Azpidistra



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azpidistra/pseuds/Azpidistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The benefit to being considered the “village idiot” was it allowed you to meet all <i>sorts</i> of people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Village Idiot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadClairvoyant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadClairvoyant/gifts).



> Thank you, as always, to my betas K. and T. MadClairvoyant, hope you have a happy winter holidays (however, you celebrate).

The benefit to being considered the “village idiot” was it allowed you to meet all _sorts_ of people. Which is why, Cassandra supposed, she currently found herself pouring tea for a dark-haired woman she had never seen, whose accent she could not quite place, and whose clothes did not quite match the village garb. Still, from before she had been banished by Apollo, her mother had instilled in her an impeccable sense of manners, so she poured this strange woman tea, and asked sweetly, “Honey?”

“No,” the woman shook her head, and eyed one of the cakes Cassandra had very carefully set out, “thank you.” 

Cassandra sat back on her haunches, wary. It was not often she had guests. She had long since taken residence in the temple, for despite all she had been through, it was still the one place she felt even remotely safe. True, the villagers would occasionally come, asking her a question, only to laugh when she spoke of visions and dreams, ones she knew to be true, even if they did not believe. Apollo had taken much from her in the callous use of his curse on her, but he would not take her pride, or her will.

This woman, however, was not like the others. She had a wildness about her; she smelled like the moors Cassandra had only seen in dreams. 

“You think too much, child,” the woman spoke, startling Cassandra from her thoughts.

Cassandras blinked, before ducking her head. “I am not a child, not anymore.”

The woman watched her a moment over her tea cup. “No, I suppose you are not.” She set her tea cup down. “You angered a god, after all.”

“How do you --?” She hesitated. People talked, she knew. Her tale of woe - how Apollo had offered her his gift of prophecy, and taken it back when she had rejected his advances. She had been young, she had _stupidly_ thought he’d be content with simple affections, rather than his purposeful chase of her womanhood. But the story told only partly the truth. She had kept her womanhood ultimately, but so had she kept the gift of Apollo’s prophecy. Did this woman - “Has the tale reached your lands too?”

“Lands, my child?” The woman smiled, and Cassandra shivered, for there was something chilling, but also melancholy, about her smile. “I have no lands anymore than you any longer have people.” She leaned forward. “I can help you.”

“No one can help me.”

“Is that what they tell you? Is that what your god told you? Gods are made to anger, my dear. They are made to be fought against.”

“How so?” Cassandra asked, her interest piqued.

“You might say I worship gods similar to yours. We call them by different names, and attach different entities to those names. The god I worship as War, for example, we call Morrigan, and our god is a she. But the sentiments are the same. Our beliefs are as old as time. But there are those who believe, like time, our beliefs must change. They try to add new names and new meanings to our gods, calling them now the one true god, and his son and saviour. Our mother, maiden, and crone, they now call Mary.” Her look was far away. “The sentiments are still the same, all religions are connected, but they do not see that. Those that do not believe these new gods, are punished. I bore a son to my king and brother, born of the Mother Goddess herself, and while he is heralded as an heir-prince in my brother’s kingdom, I am banished to the darker corners of the kingdom.” She smiled then, and again, Cassandra saw something chilling and sad in her expression. She leaned forward. “I, too, am a prophetess, my child. Would _you_ like to know a secret?”

“Secrets do not sit well with me, I am afraid. I know too many. I speak too many.”

“This one I hope you will never speak.” The woman watched her expectantly, and and finally - hesitantly - Cassandra nodded. “My brother and my son - king and prince, father and son - will fight each other in the end. And my brother, mistrusting me for what he feels was my betrayal, will cast aside the sheath I weaved for him, threaded with magic, and love, and blood, leaving him vulnerable. He will die by his son’s hand in the end, though he too will mortally wound his son. This is _my_ curse, my child, that I will be lost to protect the one I love the most. But when he dies, I will go to him again, and at least then, he will know.”

Cassandra swallowed. For a moment, she felt compelled to tell this woman everything. How she distrusted men after Apollo’s betrayal, how she mistrusted most people. How in the end, her love, too, was not enough, not wanted. How she was both the betrayer and the betrayed. How while Apollo may not have taken her womanhood, he stole her childhood all the same. How her only friend in the darker corners of the temple was Artemis, Apollo’s sister, taken pity on her, her brother’s cast-aside. But she said nothing. Nothing of the sweet village boy who had wooed her, only to throw her to the wolves when she had dared to step back into the sunlight. Nothing of the father and mother who had cast her aside because they no longer wanted a daughter who talked such “nonsense”. But she said nothing.

Here, in these hollows, she did not tell her secrets. She heard them, and she remembered them, and as it was needed, she spoke them, and they, like hers unspoken, went unheeded.

But perhaps the woman understood. Because after a few moments, she finished her tea, and stood. Cassandra scrambled to her feet, rather ungracefully compared to the woman’s. “I thank you, my child, for the hospitality. I would offer to return your favor, but I doubt we will meet again.”

And even as the woman spoke it, Cassandra knew it to be true. “My name is Cassandra,” she said, and perhaps the woman knew, it was the first time since Apollo that she had given her name willingly.

“I know,” the woman smiled. “And mine is Morgan le Fey.” She bowed slightly. “Blessed be, child,” and before Cassandra could respond, she was gone.

****

It was some years yet later, an afternoon deep in the heart of a seemingly eternal winter, when Cassandra heard the news whispered. A king had fallen in a land turned to the newer gods, and the Maiden herself had met him in his passing, and had embraced him.

Cassandra had bowed her head at the news, knowing, understanding.

And smiling, hood pushed back, she went out to greet the awakening spring.


End file.
